What pc spec? - Player Pro / Media Manager

[dslnc studio]

Dear all

I am trying to budget 2 PB Player Pro boxes but are a bit lost in what hardware specs to go with.

What can be recommended?

brands (dell, hp, boxx, etc)
what gfx cards? (what is recommended, and what vendor brands (evga, pny, etc))


And for the PB manager station what is necesary?

- laptop? (what screen rez, gpu, cpu)


And regarding network:

- what switches?

And and and -
what type of sound cards can be rocemmended (external usb /firewire, what brand? digidesign, maudio, etc)


My type of material mainly is prerendered video in 1024x576


Thanks in advance

Søren Christensen,
dslnc studio, http://www.dslnc.com

[Daniel Kaminski]

Hi,

Wow, that are a lot of questions:

PB Media Player PC

It all depends on what you are doing.

One Option is a well equiped Multimedia/Gaming PC.
For a new PC I would propably recommend using a NVIDIA GTX260 or a GTX460 or GTX465 Graphicscard.
A 7200rpm Harddrive is a minimum, better is a RAID System with 2 or 4 Drives.
Any newer Dualcore Processor will do the Job, but I would recommend going with an Intel Processor like an i5 or i7.
Make sure that you have a big enough PSU.

If you need a Portable Solution that you can easily take on an airplane, you might want to take a look at the Laptop Workstations from DELL or HP. Other Manufactures also might have solutions, but I do not know them.

If you need a Solution for a permanent Install, you might want to consider 19" Server Housings, and Servergrade Components that are made for running 24/7 365 days a year.

PB Manager:
Without Preview: Any Dualcore PC will do. No special graphics requirements (must be able to run Windows XP), but I would advice to get one with a NVIDIA or ATI Graphics Chip with dedicated VideoRAM not not shared. Most Laptops will do without any problems.
Screen Size: I like the bigger the better, because I can see more information at the same time.

With Preview:
Same as Player PC, but it depends on how much preview you are using and how many servers, players you are going to controll.

If you have more than 6 Servers / Players and a lot of timeline Programming you might want to look into a Dualhead GFX Card and one or two 1920x1200 Displays. Because what you need is screen realestate, so that you can see many servers and layers at the same time.

Nearly any new Laptop with a dedicated graphicschip from NVIDIA or ATI and dedicated video ram will do.

A good practive is keeping all thoses Computers the same, that way you can swap them out very easy incase one has a problem.

Switches:
CISCO, LINKSYS, LEVELONE and DLINK Gigabitswitches work fine.
If you have a big network (I mean big!) which has also Artnet and or MANet Traffic (or other protocolls) it those cases you might want to consider a managed switch that can route protocolls. Running 4-5 Universes of MANet or Artnet is not considered big or a lot of traffic. If you have 10 Servers and 20 Universes of Artnet than you are starting to get big.

Your networkswitch is your comunication backbone. One thing I look for are internal PSU instead of cheap external PSUs where the connector can easily slip out.

Soundcards:
If you only need stereo out, a lot of times the internal soundcard will do just fine. If you need a higher quality or 5.1/7.1 Sound external Soundcard from RME are very good option. There is also a Soundblaster 5.1 USB Soundcard that works OK. Motu MK2 Soundcards most of the time work fine as well.

Maybe some of the other users can tell you what they use and what works for them.

Daniel

[Jason Riordan]

I think Daniel answered the question perfectly.

For ourselves, we have Player boxes that are from HP and Lenovo that are designed for Graphic workstations. These work great as they are business machines (no extra software that is not needed on them) and they function very well for our needs. The best part is the warranty options for them. It all comes down to how much you wish to spend.

For switches we recommend either HP ProLink switches that are 10/100/Gigabit Level 2 switches that are available at a great price. They also have future upgrade options with Fiber connections on the front (1810G-24). Another option that I sell to our clients is ELC Level 3 switches for lighting networks. They allow you to filter all of the traffic without any slow down to the network. Great for our application.

Thats my 3 cents worth

[dslnc studio]

Thanks for the swift answers -

I have some more questions about the media manger put have posted in another forum to not get OT


Cheers,

Søren Christensen, dslnc studio
http://www.dslnc.com